A typical household may have four, five, or more, television viewing areas and/or rooms with televisions, most of which consumers expect to have television content provided by a television programming content provider. In an IP-based television (IPTV) system, a television-based client device does not include a physical tuner like a conventional television set-top box, for example. Rather the television programming content and other media content is delivered to the household as IP-based data via a communication network.
In a multi-room viewing system, a primary device typically receives the television programming and other media content as the IP-based data, and then allocates the content to the other television-based node devices of the system. The primary device manages viewing and recording conflicts for the viewing system, such as recording times and bandwidth conflicts between the various data streams that are allocated to the node devices and to viewer requested actions, such as a request to view live television, receive video on-demand, listen to an audio channel, and the like via a data stream.
The primary device of a multi-room viewing system also controls or manages the DVR (digital video recorder) functionality and utility in the overall system because the node devices do not have the same DVR functionality and utility as the primary device in the system. If the primary device of a multi-room viewing system is missing or taken out of service, the other television-based node devices of the system may be rendered unusable, or unable to manage bandwidth and media content allocation conflicts.